Film reviews: One Battle After Another has its moments, but drags

Plus: Sunphlowers speaks to new starts; The Librarians sees battle-lines drawn in Trump's America

Chase Infiniti in One Battle After Another

• One Battle After Another 
• ★★★★☆
• Cinematic release

PAUL THOMAS ANDERSON’s latest film, One Battle After Another (15A), blends comedy and drama as America grapples with racism and white supremacy. 

Migrant camps line the US-Mexico border while sanctuary zones offer limited refuge. Interracial relationships are legal but frowned upon, pushing some to join an underground revolution.

Leonardo DiCaprio plays Bob Ferguson, a member of revolutionary group French 75, who is in a fiery relationship with the group’s leader, the unpredictable Perfidia (Teyana Taylor). 

During an attack on a detention centre, they confront the deranged Colonel Lockjaw (a creepy Sean Penn), a white supremacist who is sexually fixated on Perfidia. 

After a failed bombing attempt, Lockjaw intensifies his pursuit of French 75, targeting Perfidia in particular.

When Perfidia gets pregnant, she stays devoted to the battle, causing tension with Bob.

After the baby is born, Perfidia leaves to continue the fight, leaving Bob to raise their child. 

He becomes a fugitive, and 16 years later, we find Bob and his daughter, Willa (a brilliant Chase Infiniti) living in a sanctuary town. 

Willa is clever and self-sufficient, unlike her father, who has become increasingly over-reliant on drugs. 

She dismisses his claims of impending danger as drug-induced paranoia, leaving her stunned when Bob’s delusions become reality and Lockjaw targets her. 

Lockjaw’s mission jeopardises not only them but also everyone in their sanctuary town, including its leader, Carlos (Benicio del Toro).

One Battle After Another features thrilling action, first-rate performances, dark humour, and a terrifying sense that Anderson’s depiction of America is not that far from reality. 

DiCaprio leans into stoner comedy, resulting in one of his best performances. 

It has undeniably brilliant moments, but the film is overly long and could benefit from a decent edit. Nevertheless, expect Oscar nods.

Ciara O’Dwyer

Sunphlowers.

• Sunphlowers 
• ★★★☆☆
• Cinematic release

Set on the East coast of Ireland, Sunphlowers (12A) opens with recently widowed Catherine (Anne McCrudden) discovering that her husband, Michael, was living a double life, having an affair with a local woman while allowing the family farm to sink into the mire of insurmountable debt. 

Stoical in public, devastated in private, Catherine initially resists the friendly overtures of Tony (Patrick Bergin), who patiently encourages her to join a local artists’ group and rejuvenate her long-lost love of painting.

Writer-director Dave Byrne has crafted an ostensibly conventional narrative of a woman rebuilding a life from the rubble of who she once believed herself to be, but while the story certainly hits the familiar beats, the detail tends to buck our expectations: There’s a happy ending available to Catherine, but it’s not the one we might necessarily expect.

Anne McCrudden is very quietly powerful as the flinty but fragile Catherine, and she gets strong support from an understated Patrick Bergin and Jerry Fish as the ebullient art teacher.

Declan Burke

The Librarians.

• The Librarians 
• ★★★★★
• Cinematic release

A documentary that plays out like a contemporary take on Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, The Librarians (PG) opens in Texas in 2021 with the notorious ‘Krause List’, compiled by Republican State Representative Matt Krause, of 850 books to be removed from public school libraries to protect children from so-called ‘pornographic material’. 

When it emerges that the list largely targets books about transgender and LGBT+ characters and narratives, the battle lines are drawn, and the State’s librarians find themselves in the firing line.

As the censorship spreads beyond Texas to the rest of the US, the fight for freedom of speech becomes, as one librarian puts it, ‘the civil rights fight of our time’. 

Directed by Kim A Snyder, The Librarians evokes McCarthyism and Nazi-era fascism as the book-burning conservatives target not only the library curators — some lose their jobs, with others receive death threats — but a particular cross-section of society’s most vulnerable children. 

Enraging, uplifting, and timely, The Librarians is one of the most important films of the year.

Declan Burke